The Silver Project/Transcript
WORK IN PROGRESS; NEEDS HUMAN REVIEW "go! Go! Go!" not "where? Where? Where?" it's not smart or correct, but it's one of the things that makes us what we are. [ horns honking ] [ jazz music plays ] [ geese honking ] [ ducks quacking ] [ water splashes ] on today's show, I'm gonna turn a car into a portable drive-in movie, dalton humphries is gonna show you how to add value to a precious heirloom, bill's called out at the plate, and harold finds out what happens when you turn your back on a relative. And now here's the man who's all bark, even though he's out of his tree, my uncle, red green! Thank you very much, and please welcome the guy we refer to as "free to good home," my nephew, harold. [ torch whooshing ] scary stuff. Been excitement this week at the lodge. Buster hadfield and his wife just got back from a trip where they drove all over the country. Wow. Really? I just thought they were gonna go visit their relatives, like, a couple hundred miles from here in port asbestos. Yeah, well, that was the plan, but, you know, buster hates to pull over and ask for directions when he gets lost. Wa-a-a! So he drove all over the continent instead? Wa-a-a! Well, I don't -- I don't blame him, harold. It's embarrassing, you know, to look like you don't know where you're going. You don't want people thinking you're an idiot. Especially when they're right. Wa-a-a. Well, the good thing was he could drive pretty much nonstop, because with his wife yelling at him like that, he doesn't have to worry about falling asleep at the wheel. Oh, his poor wife. That makes for a long time when you're sitting beside somebody going, "I know what I'm doing!" without any proof. Yeah. It's like having you as a producer/director. So, the one time they pulled over for gas, she went in, bought a camera so she could take pictures that they could use at the divorce trial, but by the time they got home, of course, all is forgiven. Now they've invited the whole bunch of us to come over to their place and see their pictures. Oh. Well, ha. Okay. Uh, I got so much to do, I can't go. You know, I got to clean my glasses, floss my teeth, you know. Well, that's great, 'cause if you're not going, I'll be able to go. Oh, okay. Make sure you get directions before you leave. It'd be really hard to do the show from mexico. Wa-a-a! You're watching "the red green show." one man's junk is another man's treasure. [ pulley squeaking ] [ guitar playing ] ♪ well, if you're asked on a picnic ♪ ♪ and you can't refuse ♪ ♪ be extra careful in the sandwich you choose ♪ ♪ ham is okay, unless it's green and wet ♪ ♪ egg is dicey, and sardine is a threat ♪ ♪ if you're in doubt, don't take a chance ♪ ♪ only eat the food that's covered with ants ♪ ♪ if there aren't any on it, that's an important clue ♪ ♪ 'cause if the bugs won't eat it ♪ ♪ then neither should you ♪ today on "meet your member," we're talking to winston rothschild, who is c.E.O., c.O.O., and c-3po of rothschild sewage and septic sucking services. Winston, maybe you could tell our viewers how you got to where you are, wherever that might be. Well, yeah, thanks, red. I, uh -- I'm from about 70 miles from here. Small, little village -- uh, didn't have a name, eh? It couldn't afford one. Really? And, of course, I guess your dad was in the sewage business before you. No, no, no, no, no. No. Uh, dad was in the railroad there for most of his life, eh? He, uh -- you know, he spent the early years as a coal man. Oh, yeah. And, uh, then he, uh -- I don't know what happened. Three or four years later, they went to diesel electric, and so he'd just go into work and fall asleep in the box car. That would be a fascinating job, I would think. And then, uh, after 30 years, the railroad fired him, eh? Just like that, like he was nothing. I guess it would be hard for him to find another job that he was, you know, kind of suited for. [ chuckles ] you got that right, eh? And even after the $500,000 wrongful-dismissal settlement, eh? Yeah. I'll never forget, that very day, he come home and said, "winston, three things. "number one, start your own business. "number two, be your own boss. "number three, get off the couch. I got to take a nap." well, uh, winston, I'll tell you, you know, you've done well for yourself. I mean, around here, your name is synonymous with sewage. [ ducks quacking ] I'll tell you, you have never experienced full-blown terminal boredom until you sit through those holiday pictures taken by buster hadfield, [ cans clanging ] or, as we call him, the accidental tourist. But I'll tell you, even if you got great pictures, like my slides, you still can't get people to come over to your house and look at them. So, that's why this week on "handyman corner," I thought I'd show you how to make a portable projection system, and I'm not just talking about a slide projector on wheels. I'm talking about this. [ grunting ] [ crash ] your very own drive-away drive-in theater, 'cause drive-ins are fun and they're romantic, especially the back seat. Now, your guests are gonna sit in here just like they do at a drive-in, but with our unit, the screen is much more interactive 'cause what we're gonna do is just pop the hood up like this. We'll mount a screen on the inside, and the screen's right there in their face. We just open this up. [ grunts ] oh. All right. Okay. Well, uh, this hood opens the wrong way. Nice work, harold. Don't worry about it. I'll just take her off, and we'll mount her properly. Now, when you remount that, you can weld on the old hinges or you can bolt on new hinges or you could use what I use, the handyman's secret weapon, duct tape. Now it opens the right way. Thank you just the same, harold. And we prop that up in there, and now what we need is something to use as a screen. I'm thinking something clean and white, maybe one of the lodge sheets. Something a little cleaner and whiter than that. I got an idea. [ banging ] door off a fridge. We'll use that side there. You know, they say you're supposed to take the door off a fridge before you throw it out anyway, and we'll have to throw that one out now for sure. Okay. So, we got our screen mounted inside the hood there, and I've run the power supply back from the battery, courtesy of a couple of sets of jumper cables. Use as many as you like. And they're going to power the slide projector here, which I'm gonna throw in up onto the -- the back shelf of the -- of the car, which is not really good for anything, anyhow. Hook those up. There we go. Now, to power the whole unit up, all's we have to do is start the car. [ engine turns over ] [ whoosh! ] oh, boy! That's bright, isn't it? Wow! Boy, it'll do. But we've left out the one thing that teenagers enjoy doing most at a drive-in -- eating popcorn. So, all's we got to do is, uh, take the lid off our jar of popcorn here and, uh, turn her upside down over that hole that's making all the noise in the exhaust manifold. There we go. Now the, uh, heat of the engine will pop the popcorn. [ corn popping ] there we go. And she comes out back here. Of course, what you want to do is to attach a piece of flexible piping so you can channel that popcorn up into some kind of a container, like that, and you can have your various other treats in here -- your chocolate bars, your drinks, your what have you. And there you have your very own portable drive-in theater with all the accoutrements. So, remember, if the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy. Let's get back to our slide show. Oh, boy, oh, boy. You're gonna love this. All right. Now, it's a little out of focus, I know, but see that guy there? Forget his name. He was funny. [ laughs ] oh, yeah. This is a picture of his wife. Oh, no. That's the rockies. Stay tuned. Harold's gonna call for my high inside heat, and I'm gonna talk to you teenagers about those darn bicycles of yours. I see a lot of you teenagers are riding bicycles out there, and I know that's good for the environment and everything, but what a pain. You ride in the middle of the lane and come around corners just like you were a vehicle or something, and you're practically invisible, you know. What do you weigh, 60 pounds? And you wear one of them spandex suits, wraps your body so tight you look like a roll bar. You're risking your lives out there, 'cause if we get into a misunderstanding as to who has the right-of-way, I'm in a van, you're in a helmet. You lose. Now, I don't want to make judgments about how you teenagers want to kill yourselves, but I would suggest that you either grow up and get a car or ride on the sidewalk, but not my sidewalk. That's where I park the van. [ rattling ] well, you should have seen buster hadfield's pictures from his trip. Unbelievable. All taken from inside the car. Mostly shots of the rearview mirror, except for the california ones. They were all sun-visor shots. Well, maybe the camera was too complicated for him. Oh, you got that right, harold. He had 60 pictures of the inside of the lens cap. All of them out of focus. And the rest of the pictures were either overexposed, underexposed, or boring. I'll tell you, if it wasn't for the pimento and onion cheese dip, none of us would have stayed. Well, that's too bad, you know, 'cause pictures are expensive. I remember I paid $12 for my school portrait. When I got it back, you should have seen it. I looked like a geek. You're kidding me? No, seriously. Yeah. Must have got my bad side. Yeah, your front. And I'll tell you, buster has really lost his mind. Harold, get this -- he says he can get all the money back that he spent on the pictures by taking silver out of the negatives -- silver, harold, like there's silver in film negatives. Well, there is. Huh? Well, in old film, anyway. Yeah. It's the silver that actually forms the picture. What are you talking about, harold? Well, in photographic film, until recently, they're used like forms of silver to take the picture. It's called silver halides. Oh, well, sil-- silver halides, yeah. Well, I knew that silver -- well, I -- he said "silver." that's all I'm questioning -- you know, the silver. Yeah. Right. So, yeah, okay. All right. But he says he can get the silver out of the silver halides. Like, good luck, buster. Well, you know, he can if he uses the right emulsion. Well, that's -- yeah. Well, I did-- well, I don't think he's got the emul-- see, now, okay. Where did you get to be such a genius? Well, I'm not. Well, you're smarter than I am. Oh, yeah, okay. I'm a genius to you. Winston rothschild here for rothschild sewage and septic sucking services, where our motto is "waste not, pump not!" 1-800-555-suck. Red: We're out here by the main highway at humphries everything store with the man who knows the value of everything, dalton humphries. Hello, dalton. How you doing? Yeah, red, I'm just having a chuckle at somebody else's expense. [ chuckles ] oh, yeah, with that silver cup there, eh? No, no. No, no. This isn't silver. No, no. This is, uh -- this is polished aluminum. It doesn't, uh -- it doesn't have the weight of silver. Oh. So, that's pretty much worthless, I guess. Well, to you, maybe, but -- but I'm gonna give it some character here. There. That's better. Now, just engrave "baby" on it or something and maybe the date 1802, and, uh, I'll sell it for 400 bucks to some sucker. [ laughs ] that's very commendable. Uh, dalton, did you know we got a project going where we're taking silver out of film negatives? Oh, yeah. You know, there's a better way to do it than that. Shouldn't be telling trade secrets here, but... Take a look at this plate here. Yeah? You see right around the edge there, there's a little beading of silver someone's painted on there. Yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh. Yeah, well, that's silver. It's real silver. Isn't that something? Wow. Oh, yeah. You know, I got 400 of these plates. I got them when a, uh, hotel went out of business, or maybe it was an asylum or something. Anyway, I'm gonna sit down with a putty knife for two or three weeks, chisel all that silver off the edge, and when I'm finished, I'm gonna have a whole bag full of silver. Whole bag full. Whole bag. Oh, boy. [ spraying ] you know what I noticed, uncle red? Well, guys take their dates out, you know, to plays and restaurants and movies and stuff, but after they get married, they hardly ever go out anymore. I know. That's one of the main reasons for getting married, harold. Well, if I get married, I'm gonna take my wife out on dates all the time just to show her that I love her. I think it'll look more like gratitude than love, harold. Just because a couple don't go out together anymore doesn't mean they don't love each other. They just get busy, that's all. Busy? What could be more important than spending time with your sweetheart? Well, the priorities of daily living, harold. Bills to pay, maybe overtime at the office, work around the house, perhaps a sporting event on television -- that kind of thing. Well, I just happen to think that married spouses take each other for granted. Well, harold, you know, when you spend a lot of time with somebody, it doesn't necessarily make you eager to spend more time with them. You and I have proven that. That's different. We're like, you know, guys, whereas a guy and a girl, like, you know... Wa-a-a! Yeah, well, there's something else you should know, harold. After you get married, 99% of the time, sleeping together means sleeping together. No way! Wa-a-a! I'd never be that tired. Well, maybe not, but every girl within 100 miles of you will be that tired, believe me. No problem. I'll move. [ explosion ] so, harold and I had a big day of relaxing planned, but, uh, bill had asked us to come out and take part in america's favorite pastime, which I was disappointed to see was baseball. So, anyway, he had all the gear there, and he wanted me to go out and pitch the ball. Why he handed me a batting helmet, I couldn't understand, but with bill, you know, you're always better to have some protective gear on. So, harold's gonna be the catcher, I guess, and bill's helping him. This is helping, I suppose. Oh, my gosh. Could be a while, I suppose. All right. They got the one leg going. Now they got the other, 'cause the catcher has to have the padding on and everything, but I think maybe harold might be better on his own. I guess I've always said that. You guys gonna be long? You know, they say a lot of people come out to, uh, see these games. There we go. All right. Fine, let's go. [ clunk ] play ball. Oh! How can you have strike one on you and the ball hasn't even been thrown yet? Yeah, he's fine, bill. Yeah. I'm not sure he -- harold. No, harold. Harold. Over here. Here, boy. Here, boy. There we go. All right. Finally. I don't know whether to give him my knuckler or my sliding, sinking fastball or -- what? What? What? Oh. Time out. What's his problem now? Oh, he doesn't like the bat. [ clang ] I don't know why. Ow! Ow! All right. Just pick a bat, bill. Right now harold and I are getting a little bored, having a game of catch. Well, one of us is. Oh, man. All right, bill. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, look out! Oh, oh! Nice one. Oh, I see you picked yourself a bat there, eh, bill? All right. Oh, my gosh. All right. Here we go. What? What? Oh, for gosh sake. [ vacuum whirs ] I have nothing to say about that. All right. I'm looking in for my sign. No, no. Don't like that one. No, no, no. Yes, sir. That's the one I like. High heat. [ whoosh! Clang! ] I believe you're out at the plate, sir. Attaboy, harold. Nice grip. That's how that works. Stay tuned for some dry-dock poetry, and then winston tries to get ahold of a big one. "April love," by me. "on a sunny April day, years ago, "my mother turned sweet 16, "and my father met my mother on another sunny April day. "and on a third sunny day in April, "they first kissed and fell in love. "and another April day, they wed, "as the sun shone from above. "and I was born yet another sunny day in April. "I'm told that was one of the few aprils where we had five sunny days in a row." [ rattling ] well, this idea of getting silver out of the film negatives has kind of started a bit of a gold rush up here at the lodge. Everybody's going back, digging up all their old stuff, throwing it into the pot. A lot of wedding photos showing up there. Except for old man sedgwick, 'cause all his pictures are painted on cave walls. I think you guys should realize, you know, that getting silver from film is a very low-yield exercise. Well, low-yield is kind of our specialty up at the lodge here. Okay, yeah, but there's like a millionth of a smidge of silver in each photograph, you know. You're gonna need like 100 rolls of film just to get 1 ounce of silver. Wa-a-a! You know how much 1 ounce of silver's worth? $6. You know what 100 rolls of our film is worth? Nothing. Unless maybe we cover them with molasses and use them as fly strips. Yeah, but what about all the hours of work you put into it, the money you spend on chemicals? You're no further ahead. Sure we are, harold. We're learning something, we're having fun, and, most importantly, we're not out in our cars or our boats where we do the real expensive damage. [ chuckles ] you guys have a very warped sense of economy. Well, harold, when you get to our age, you give up on winning. You just try to lose as slowly as possible. Well, all this talk of silver stocks and profit margins has got our heads spinning, so I thought we'd get some sound business advice from winston rothschild, 'cause when winston talks, people back off. Well, if it isn't red, the silver fox. Hey, winston. How's business? It sucks. Sorry to hear that. No, no, it's a joke. "it sucks." you know? Oh. [ chuckles ] hose, septic, sucks. Yeah. Listen, I got some film here for you if you want to buy it. Well, uh, all right. I'm surprised you want to part with these family mementos. Um throat actually, they're -- they're recent pictures of my old man. I need to tell you the truth. Uh, you'd be doing him a favor, red, 'cause most of them could be used against him in a court of law. Oh, sure. Yeah. So, winston, do you have any business advice for us on this deal? Red, you got to follow your heart, all right? Follow your heart. You know, if you feel strongly about this silver project, I say go for it, eh? Okay. Like, you're not in it for just the money, are you? Not so far. There you go. Yeah. [ slurping ] boy, I'll tell you, I've done a lot of crazy things in the early years myself, eh? Like for instance, once I started out this whole mail-order thing, but then some idiot broke the chain and never sent a dollar to seven of his friends, eh? And then I got into this pyramid scheme, which quickly collapsed into a rhomboid. Boy, I lost my shirt on that one. And then I started selling seeds and greeting cards, but, uh, the prizes were never as good as they looked on the back of the comic books, eh? Oh, I've been there. But you know what? Then I found something that I was good at and I really enjoyed. Well, why are you in the sewage business? Oh, no, that's what I'm talking about, eh? Oh, oh. This is what I like most in life. Wow. Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Boy, that was a double flusher. Whew! So, I don't know. Maybe, uh -- you know, maybe the silver escapade, uh, could be, you know, if you're lucky, your sewage plan. Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me. I hear the distant sound of everything going down the drain. [ creaking ] well, this getting the silver out of the film negatives started off a little bit slow, but then we got kind of an assembly-line thing going there. Buster hadfield would unroll the film. Moose would get the emulsion off with a belt sander. And then, uh, junior singleton would suck it up with a vacuum. And then I would dissolve the dust into vinegar. And then old man sedgwick got the silver out of the vinegar by using electricity hooked up to his pacemaker. I'll tell you, there can't be one good roll of film left in all of possum county. Moose even donated all the mug shots he's had done over the years. And how many ingots of silver did you get with all your effort? One tiny, little blob, harold, about the size of your brain. Wa-a-a! Well, well, well, well, well, good business move, uncle red. You go to cash that in, you'll find you probably worked for about, oh, 2 cents a day. Wa-a-a! Which, come to think of it, is probably all your time is worth. Well, we're not gonna cash it in for a while, harold. We're gonna hang on to it until silver goes up enough in value that we can make money on this. Well, I don't think the planet earth's gonna be around that long. Oh, sure it will, harold. The big question is, who do we trust to hang on to the silver while we're waiting? So we took a page out of the lone ranger's book. We melted her down into a bullet. We went down and fired her into the dead tree in the center of the town park. Which tree? The silver birch. We're not stupid, harold. [ chuckles ] oh, no. No, no, no, no. [ screeching ] oh, that's the cry of the possum. It's meeting time, kemo sabe. [ chuckles ] well, I'd call him "tonto," but he's more like toto. I'll be down in a while, harold. If my wife is watching, I'll be coming straight home after the meeting, and if you're wondering what I got your sister for her silver anniversary, tell her it's in the park. And to the rest of you, thanks so much for watching, and until next time, on behalf of myself and harold and the whole gang up here at possum lodge, keep your stick on the ice. [ screeching ] [ indistinct conversations ] okay, everybody rise up. Stand up, baby. All: Quando omni flunkus, moritati. Now, fellas... If you'd like to become a member of possum lodge and you got three bucks to blow, you can either mail it to the address here on the screen or dial 1-800-ypossum.